


La reine scélérate

by thedevilchicken



Category: Les adieux à la reine | Farewell My Queen (2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:31:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"La reine scélérate" means "the wicked queen" - this is the title of a non-fiction book about Marie Antoinette and the revolutionary pamphlets about her. The book is by Chantal Thomas, who also wrote Les adieux à la reine. And yes, the names of the pamphlets are real!</p></blockquote>





	La reine scélérate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yeats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeats/gifts).



"Have you read this?" 

Someone pushes a crumpled fold of paper into Sidonie's hands as they pass in the corridor. She glances down as she walks, as she makes her way to the stairway up to her room, and what she sees makes her blush as her chest flutters. 

She hasn't read it. She won't read it, she tells herself, because it's not true and reading it would be... she doesn't know, except perhaps it's even treason and the very last thing that she could ever do is betray her queen. That's what it would be, she thinks: betrayal. Just thinking the word makes her feel unsteady. She needs to lie down.

She tucks it under her mattress, pushes it under so far and so hard that the wood of the bed frame leaves splinters in her wrist that make her itch just as much as the mosquitos and the fleas, and tells herself that she'll burn it in the morning. She'll throw it on the fire under the kettles in the kitchens at breakfast because there are always so many people there that no one would notice the papers curling in the flames. Then she'll be rid of it. She won't have to think about it again. 

The queen calls for her in the morning, though, and she doesn't have the time to do it. She sits there in the queen's chambers, reading letters aloud as two women show an endless parade of wigs. The queen is barely listening, if at all, which makes Sidonie frown over the pages of the letter. She won't think about the other pages, she tells herself, the ones hidden there under her mattress, treacherous, her fingers hot with just the memory of holding them. Her cheeks are flushed. She thinks maybe the queen will notice; she thinks maybe all the queen has to do is look at her to know. 

"Did you read it?" 

Honorine nudges her, gives her a conspiratorial smile that makes her feel almost as queasy as the slightly sour wine that two tipsy boys spilled on the dinner table. It soaked into the bread and now everything tastes like alcohol that's almost turned to vinegar. It's dark even with the candles flickering over the food so maybe Honorine can't tell that Sidonie is blushing, again. She feels like that's all she's done for hours, her cheeks turning hot every time she thinks about the end of the day and the pages hidden in her room. She hopes they're still there, that no one's found them, that they haven't taken them away and shown them to Madame Campan, shown them to Monsieur Moreau, left them for the queen to see and told her _your reader, the Laborde girl, hid these in her room..._

She excuses herself from the table. She has to dispose of them. She has to do it now, before anyone finds out that she has them. She runs all the way back to her room; she opens the door, breathless, her dress feeling so tight she can barely breathe. She doesn't know how the ladies at court can wear corsets all day long and not faint from it. They look so pretty, so delicate, but the queen always looks just like a woman should, whether she's laced into a gown of silk or fine brocade or reclining in a simple shift, a nightdress, even the peasant clothes she wears in the hameau. 

She doesn't even reach under the bed. She means to, she knows she does, but when she closes the door and sets the candlestick on the table by the clock, she can't make her hands move from her sides. She blows out the candle. She sits on the bed in the dark, still clothed, stares at the darkness where the wall must be until she falls asleep and dreams the things she can't think in the daytime. 

Days pass. Days at the palace are never dull and always full; there are books to read even when the queen doesn't want them read aloud, the grounds are extensive and sometimes she likes to explore except that these days she can't let her mind wander. She sews instead, she talks to Monsieur Moreau and he makes her smile, almost takes her mind away from the thing that she can't think. He has such stories to tell; she thinks what a wonderful thing it must be to be an archivist and knows how perfect it would be to archive the life of her queen. She doesn't write, though; she's a reader, she doesn't own a pen and where would she find paper? Perhaps Monsieur Moreau would give her some but she wouldn't feel right asking. And then if she did, and he gave her pen and paper and ink to write in, that would just be one more thing she'd have to hide. 

She barely eats at dinner and maybe drinks too much tonight, like everyone else. Some of the others complain, say they have cousins in the countryside or in a town somewhere, maybe Paris because they all talk like Paris is the centre of the world these days and not the palace where they live, say they're better off even though they're farmers or they're seamstresses, or drive a carriage for a nobleman whose name Sidonie can't even find in the lists in the library. She has another glass of wine and it spills on her dress so she leaves to scrub it clean. She hangs it over the chair in her room and she unlaces her shoes, kneels when she knocks one over and then the very next thing she knows, she's kneeling there with the pages in her hand. 

She's seen some of the boys with things like this, gathered around it while one of them who can read enough to make it out tells the story behind the one or two bawdy illustrations. She found one of the grooms in the stable one day; she doesn't think he saw her as she stood there, frozen still, eyes huge, not sure if she was disgusted or intrigued as he hunched over his manhood in one hand, the picture of a pamphlet clutched in the other. Some of the laundry girls had been tittering in the back of the kitchen one day and they had more pages spread in front of them that they scrabbled together when they finally saw Sidonie coming. They all knew it was wrong, she thought. They all know that it's wrong. Perhaps she knows it better than anyone, but there she is nonetheless. 

They all have such lurid titles. _The uterine furors of Marie-Antoinette_ , she'd heard the cook's boys read out, halting uncertain what the words even meant. She knew. _The loves of Charlot and Toinette_ , the passages of it that she tried not to hear the girls whisper, the pictures she tried not to see the groom stroking as he stroked himself. Paolo was reading one in his gondola one day before the Duchesse de Polignac stepped in, _The Royal Dildo_. But maybe he was just looking at the pictures and maybe Sidonie just imagined the awkward way he stood to steer the little boat, the strain in his voice and the smile of amusement that curved the rosy lips of Gabrielle de Polignac. _The Royal Bordello_. Versailles is nothing like this! She knows it's not. Just the thought of her queen and the brother of the king, the things Sidonie tries not to hear the others say the pamphlets say they do... 

But here she is, kneeling in the flickering candlelight with those pages in her hands. And the picture... it's obscene. She can barely look at it, she turns her head or at least she tries to. She can barely look at it, until she can and then she's staring. Her queen, beautiful even in caricature, her hair piled high, a smile at her lips, and her legs spread wide with Gabrielle de Polignac between them. 

Everyone says these things about the two of them, whispers in corridors, little glances when they see the two of them together. They're just close friends, Sidonie thinks. They're such close friends that they can't bear to be apart. The Duchesse is so lively, she's so beautiful and vital and everyone's eyes are on her but it's always like she was born to be seen, to be envied and loved and despised and she carries it all so very lightly, so very well. And the queen... the queen is perfect. She's regal and she's flighty, she's capricious and she's loyal and she's joy and laughter and despair. Sidonie has never seen her queen settle for a small emotion. She feels each and every moment. She's halfway between human and divine. 

The two of them together, they're a whirlwind, a tempest, a beautiful disaster of extremes as they laugh and cry and cling together or hurl themselves apart. They're the best of friends; they express their friendship physically from time to time, hands clasped, an arm around a waist or shoulders, foreheads resting one against the other as they whisper. The words on the pages there in Sidonie's hands say they're something more, the pictures show exactly what that something more might be. She doesn't believe. She doesn't want to believe. She thinks it might be true. 

Honorine told her that Gabrielle de Polignac met the queen in the Hall of Mirrors. Sidonie has pictured that moment from time to time; she's thought of the way the light reflects down the hall, how the silvery glass shows the richness of gold and the hundreds of little moving pictures of her queen as she stands there with her husband. She thinks of the way the silk of the duchesse's dress would rustle as she steps forward to be presented to the king and queen. She wasn't a duchesse then, of course; that came later, once the queen came to love her. They made her husband the count into the Duc de Polignac and so raised her up too. 

The duchesse curtsies before the royal couple, all humility, the epitome of courtly manners. She looks at the queen and Sidonie knows that that was the moment when they knew they would be friends. But now, now there's quite another look in the lilac eyes of Gabrielle de Polignac. There's a flush to the queen's cheeks beneath the pale cream of her painted cheeks. Sidonie rests her forehead down against the edge of her mattress as she kneels there on the floorboards and she tries to breathe. Her queen has a lover. It's la Polignac. 

The evidence isn't long in showing now she watches. The glances that had once seemed so chaste, such a sign of their pure friendship, are something deeper and darker that twists at Sidonie's insides. The brief brush of a hand that she'd taken for the touch of a devoted friend, it shows that in spite of everything that screams that this is wrong, they can't deny themselves. The tone of their voices, hushed as they bend their heads together or the anger sometimes as they part, that's not friendship but the fire of lovers. Sidonie can't deny it. In this, at least, the pamphlets are right. 

She watches them daily, her days a haze of the heady presence of her queen and the squalor of the kitchens where dust and dirt and sticky, drying wine will cling to her skirts or her cuffs if she's not careful. She tries not to stare are Gabrielle de Polignac when she sees her, the woman who is so envied and so hated in Versailles. She was given thirteen rooms, they say, when so many others of the court live like servants in tiny apartments off the winding, dusty corridors. She doesn't think her queen has ever seen a rat. Sidonie is starting to wonder if the cooks are putting them in the casserole. 

She watches them and she tries not to hold her breath. It makes her feel warm when she sees them, makes her wonder if she should really be watching because what they have is private, or should be. She shouldn't go back to her room at night and pull the pamphlet from under her mattress. She shouldn't look at that picture or read those words, shouldn't have such vivid, lurid images in her mind as she closes her eyes. They're more or less clothed in the pamphlet, except that her queen is missing her underclothes; in Sidonie's mind as she kneels there in the dark, their clothes are all discarded, except perhaps the queen still wears her long white stockings. 

The duchesse has no shame. It's easy for Sidonie to imagine her naked, standing, the candlelight flickering over her skin. The queen lies in bed and watches her; the duchesse shakes down her long brown hair and moves to the bed, deliberate, the same swing to her hips as there is when she's clothed and in public. The queen is under sheets, pulled up to her chin, but la Polignac starts to tug them aside as she stands at the foot of the bed; the queen laughs a silvery laugh and lets her lover reveal her pale skin inch by inch. Sidonie shivers. Her queen is so beautiful that she can barely imagine this. The rosy tips of her nipples seem too bright for her milk-white skin, the tight yellow curls between her thighs don't quite match the long, satin fall of her hair. Perhaps it's best that she can't picture this perfectly. 

La Polignac's hands skim over the queen's slim calves, slip between her thighs to part them as she crawls onto the bed. Sidonie imagines her like the cook's cat, graceful and hungry as she presses her lips to the queen's thigh, as she brushes her cheek against it, as she tickles the arch of the queen's foot and makes her squirm against the sheets, stifling her laughter with a pillow. Sidonie drops the pamphlet to the floor and her hands trail down, catch her nightshirt at the hem and ease it up over her thighs as she kneels there. The floor is hard but she barely feels it now as she shifts her legs a little wider. She barely feels the ache in her knees as she lets her forehead drop to the side of the mattress in front of her, as she lets her fingers rub her thighs and then higher, higher. 

In Sidonie's head, la Polignac lowers her head and closes her eyes and her tongue traces the soft pink lips between the thighs of her queen. Sidonie's fingers slip between her own thighs and start to rub little circles around the little tingling nub she finds there. In her head, the queen sighs and shifts against her soft, soft sheets. Sidonie bites her lip as she sighs into her mattress, shivering. In her head, she's la Polignac tonight. Her hands move over her queen's satin-soft skin, her fingers pluck softly at her taut, rosy nipples. She feels her queen's back arching as her tongue brushes the little nub between her thighs. She slips a finger inside slowly; it's hard to say if it's her queen she feels pull tight around it or herself. 

She's ashamed of herself in the morning, just like always. She can barely look at her queen, until she can and then she has to root her eyes to the drawings on the page, the captions, or she'll stare and stare and stare. She scratches instead. She hates mosquitos. She doesn't think the queen has ever been bitten. 

When her queen notices the bites, when she feels her queen's hands on her bare skin, that's when la Polignac subsides inside her. In her head she'll be Sidonie tonight. She wonders if she can remember who that is.

**Author's Note:**

> "La reine scélérate" means "the wicked queen" - this is the title of a non-fiction book about Marie Antoinette and the revolutionary pamphlets about her. The book is by Chantal Thomas, who also wrote Les adieux à la reine. And yes, the names of the pamphlets are real!


End file.
